Agricultural Experiment Station (AES)

UVI Student Workers Graft Mango Trees

UVI's St. Croix Hair Sheep Flock

Sweet Potato Harvest

UVI Student Worker Kalunda Cuffey Plants Frangipani

The Agricultural Experiment Station (AES) is located on the St. Croix Campus of the University of the Virgin Islands. AES is part of the Research and Public Service Component. The U.S. Virgin Islands are semiarid, subtropical islands in the Lesser Antilles. The islands are marked by easterly trade winds which provide a nearly constant breeze and alternating periods of drought and heavy rain. A long tradition of agriculture in St. Croix provides an ideal location for our research mission.

AES conducts basic and applied research to meet the needs of the local agricultural community in increasing production, improving efficiency, developing new enterprises, preserving and propagating germplasm unique to the Virgin Islands, and protecting the natural resource base. AES has research programs in animal science aquaculture, biotechnology, forage agronomy, fruit and ornamental crops and vegetable crops.

OUR VISION

Our vision is to generate information by conducting scientific research that leads to improved agricultural practices in the Virgin Islands and the Car!bean Region. Our research programs will be increasingly influenced by the needs of the public and the farming community and by research conducted by other agricultural research institutions Using new technologies, the results of our research will be disseminated more widely to farmers and the international scientific community.

RESULTS

Our results are disseminated to the local and regional agricultural community, scientists and the public through peer-reviewed scientific journals, conference presentations and proceedings, seminars, workshops, technical and farmers bulletins, popular media and the Cooperative Extension Service. Examples of research results can be found on the individual program sites using the links above.